Mental replay rescales the subjective duration of past events via alpha and theta oscillations

Replaying naturalistic videos at expanded speed lengthened participants’ subsequent judgments of the videos’ original duration, with longer replay linked to longer duration estimates.

• Why it matters: It is unclear whether temporally rescaled replay changes perceived duration and whether any distortion depends on what is retrieved or on neural dynamics during recall.
• What they did: Participants replayed previously encoded videos at compressed, expanded, or self-paced speeds while recording scalp EEG; alpha and theta power were analyzed for links to duration judgments.
• The result: Alpha and theta power tracked reported duration differently by speed—alpha predicted duration more under compressed replay, while theta predicted duration more under expanded replay—without changing gist or detail accuracy.

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